Sid Meier's Railroads!

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Check out the caboose on this one.

By Dan Adams

What's more exciting than watching a train roll down the track collecting goods and people on the path to financial success? Nothing, that's what! Sid Meier and his jolly band of game developers out at the wonderful Firaxis Studios (those nice people that stole millions of hours from us with games like Civilization and Pirates) will be the next group to shovel some coal into your belly and light the fire of railroading love with Sid Meier's Railroads!

Sure, it may sound as if Sid is doing all the work himself with a title like that, but there's a large dedicated team making sure that all of your railing fantasies are coming true. In order to do this, they've gone back to basics by looking at different railroading games such as the Railroad Tycoon franchise and picked out the aspects they thought were most successful, built on those, and ditched those found to be farther towards the bottom of the fun scale.

Visually, the game is pretty slick. Trains, towns, and environments have flavor and fun and unlike many railroad tycoon type games in the past, all of these eye catching objects are compressed onto a smaller map. No more of this boring open space. Instead, maps are bustling with energy. All of the cities, towns, and industry buildings scattered around the environment have been given nice little animations to make them attractive while trains have all been designed to the Firaxis visual aesthetic that we've become used to. As Dan the producer man said, it's the "friendly utopian color pallete" where everything is nice and neat. These guys aren't looking to create a gritty game. In fact they're looking to create a game that's bright and welcoming.

Railroads! takes place from the early days of the railroad systems up to the 1970s to capture both classic and more modern machinery. Ten designed maps will ship with the game centered around different parts of the US and Europe, each with different challenges and resources. Maps will also have a randomization option to make sure players have plenty of play options.

The game itself puts players in the roll of an up and coming tycoon having to compete against other large tycoons and robber barons of history like J.P. Morgan. All of these characters when under the control of the computer will have fully functional artificial personalities that make them behave in different ways as well as implement different special abilities.

Scenarios will put players in competition with these other personalities (or other actual live people in multiplayer if that's what you're into) to create the most profitable railroad company. Each tycoon will begin with a number of stock. Players will be able to purchase stock from the other tycoons throughout the game using their available funds. The last person standing with stock wins the game so this amount basically serves as a hit point meter for all player companies.

In order to make money, players will have to create working railroads connecting resources to cities and run trains back and forth to deliver the goods. Natural resources are worth less money than manufactured goods like cars farther down the line. Players can make a lot of money delivering goods between different industries and finally where the final goods are demanded. Players can also eventually buy into industries and make a longer ranged profit that way.

Laying track in between destinations looks to be an easy task as the land and track will conform to any plans. The click and drag interface allows players to create paths anywhere on the map while the game adds tunnels, rises, and bridges where necessary. The trick is just laying track in a way that will be cost effective and help shipments get to new locations in a short amount of time.

At this point, the game has just reached alpha, meaning it's basically feature complete and needs a lot of tweaking and polishing. The final game will come complete with 40 customizable trains, 30 industries, 15 robber barons, 10-12 scenarios, and support up to four players over the Internet. Look for more info about Sid Meier's Railroads! as the game's scheduled departure in October approaches.